The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle

Protease inhibitors were made widely available in 1996. In that first year, deaths from AIDS in the big cities dropped about 50 percent. Kaposi’s sarcoma lesions melted away. Michael Petrelis, who’d screamed at the CDC conference in 1987, “Drugs into bodies now!” began taking protease inhibitors when his T-cell count dropped below 100.66 Like so ma

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A thousand gays—many of them more willing to come out for a party than they’d been to come out for campaign work—dressed formally in suits and ties despite the South Florida weather, now stood stunned and tearful, looking up at the screens that told them that most of their neighbors loathed them.

The times were “full of deaths, but one of the most beautiful moments the gay community ever experienced,”68 Peter Staley later said of those years. “To be that threatened with extinction and not lay down. To stand up and fight back. The way we did it. The way we took care of ourselves and each other. The goodness we shared. The humanity we shared.

Later, at the mortuary, the director told Strong that though she was paying for the funeral, she had no right to make decisions, “a family member must do it.” Fleming’s death certificate stated she was unmarried.3 Charlene Strong, who hadn’t been a gay rights activist before, became one.

One of No on 8’s worst decisions was to keep kids out of the campaign. No children of same-sex couples talking about how the right to marry would help their families.

Spyer, still a handsome woman, sitting tall in her wheelchair; and Windsor perched on the arm of the chair, decked out in pearls, her beautifully coifed hair still platinum blonde (thanks to Clairol now), were married by Canada’s first openly gay judge, Harvey Brownstone.

Nancy Reagan might be helpful, too. She had many gay friends. (She even had a lesbian godmother—the silent screen star, Alla Nazimova.)

There were a few follow-up meetings—with the Federal Bureau of Prisons director, who promised to appoint a staff person to deal directly with homosexual complaints and to cease to call prison rape “homosexual,” when it was really an act of violence;

He pointed to each of the speakers on the dais, saying, “I’d be honored, honored, honored, honored, honored, to serve with any of you guys.”45